Two men and a church, stewards of growth

“Two years ago we had 45 first communicants. We actually had to do two separate Masses,” David Workman said while describing the need for more space at Holy Trinity Church in Mont Belvieu. And he should know, he teaches religious education to students who are making their first Eucharist.
“For our 10:30 Mass it’s not uncommon for it to be standing room only. We open up the sacristy, have people sitting in the meeting rooms. They can’t really see the altar. They can listen through the sound system,” James Prochazka said.
Prochazka and Workman saw the need for more space and have relentlessly spearheaded the effort to double the capacity of the worship space at Holy Trinity. These efforts were recognized with their selection for the Msgr. Richard DeStefano Faithful Steward award for 2015.
Prochazka, who serves on the parish council, and Workman started this project by getting everyone in the parish involved.
“We had an entire Saturday devoted to meeting with all the different ministries, the tailgate moms, the CCD group, altar servers, the Rosary society, and everybody had a voice in how we were going to proceed,” Workman, who is also the co-director of the parish ACTS team, said about how the expansion project started.
“We took everyone’s ideas. The architect listened to all the input from the various ministries and came up with a plan of what we can do,” Workman said.
“Right now we are at 225. We’ll be able to seat close to 600,” Workman said of the expansion project that comes with a $2-million price tag.
The diocesan office of Stewardship and Communications, suggested that the church hire an outside firm to orchestrate a capital campaign and raise these funds.
“Initially we thought it was a bad idea because of the cost,” Prochazka said about hiring the outside firm. “But in hindsight it was very much worth it.”
The capital campaign worked very well.
“We got all of our pledges in about four months. The next part is that we need about half of that collected. As of last week we are at about $620,000,” Workman said.
“Once we hit the $1 million, we’ll be able to be afforded a loan from the diocese for the rest, and we’ll be able to break ground,” Prochazka said.
The church would like to break ground in spring 2017.
“We’re in the process of hiring a construction company,” Prochazka said as he and Workman continue to lead the project.
“Right now what we are doing is all of the preliminary work with the city engineers, with the civil engineers, determining runoffs, mapping out the electrical. We’re doing all of the behind the scene stuff,” Workman said.
“When we built the building we are in now, that was 2001, we had one hundred families. Now we’ve got about 450,” Prochazka, an original parishioner, said. This growth in families has led to a need for a larger church.
“When we have a big funeral service, we can’t have it here. We’ve got to go to Baytown at St. John’s Church where it seats more people,” Prochazka said.
That road trip won’t be necessary when the expansion is complete.
The parish will be more than doubling its worship space capacity. The expansion also includes an 1,800 square foot multi-purpose room with partitions that can be opened for high volume Masses.
“We’re expanding our cry room, our chapel, adding some bathrooms and another meeting room,” Prochazka said